Museum Displays Building Skills

WASHINGTON — Visitors who come to the National Building Museum on Sunday will be put to work.

In brief apprenticeships and by watching demonstrations, they will learn how to stencil a floor, thatch a roof or build an aquatic garden at the museum`s sixth Festival of the Building Arts.

Participants can work side by side with more than 25 experts in blacksmithing, masonry, roofing, carpentry, gilding, flooring, applying faux finishes and restoration.

The free festival will have activities for adults and children, and advice on home improvement projects. Architects and landscape architects will be on hand to review photographs, floor plans, sketches or site plans.

The festival, which drew 1,800 people last year, will have a ``Box City,`` a neighborhood laid out on a grid in the museum`s Great Hall, where visitors can design and make small-scale buildings to add to the model.

This year`s program will include a barn raising and the construction of a log cabin using log hewing and notching technique. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America will use modern tools to build the 8-by-10- foot structure.

Members of the Ironworkers International Union will build a six-bay, 36-foot-high steel structure and will compete in one of their trade`s

traditions, racing each other to the top of a 40-foot iron column.

Anna Slafer, coordinator of the event, said, ``This festival is for anyone who has ever peeked behind a construction site fence to find out how buildings are made.``